


Busy Mending Broken Pieces

by PsychGirl (snycock)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Inspired by Twitter, Johnlock Roulette, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-23 00:43:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11391825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snycock/pseuds/PsychGirl
Summary: They've never talked about the fall, or what happened after.  Time to remedy that.





	Busy Mending Broken Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: This fic is inspired by events in the Twitterverse, which chronicles the ongoing adventures of Sherlock (@contactSH) and John (@contactJHW) after The Lying Detective. In this universe most of season 4 (including The Final Problem) never happened and Johnlock is canon. The events in question happened on May 16th and 17th; basically John stormed out with Rosie and went to Harry’s after Sherlock put an unloaded gun to his head and complained that he was so bored he was going to shoot himself. This is my take on what happened the next day. You can read the full series of tweets here (https://twitter.com/ContactSH/status/864540844803710978), but some are also summarized in italics below. 
> 
> The title comes from the lyrics to the song “Unintended” by Muse, which is on a public Spotify playlist that Sherlock made for John on his birthday: https://open.spotify.com/user/contactsh/playlist/0lLppWsCMIDVMS2MVCJMle  
>  _I’ll be there as soon as I can_  
>  _But I’m busy mending broken_  
>  _Pieces of the life I had before_
> 
> Sherlock’s description of when he knew he was in love with John is paraphrased from the timeless quote from Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, “Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
> 
> Many, many thanks to tellywhich for the fantastic beta, which involved several drafts and several late-night text conversations before I could get everything figured out.

_John. I love you. It couldn’t wait until tomorrow. I apologise. I’ve loved you since I jumped. Possibly before. I’m sorry I didn’t say. I meant to say always and never did. I suppose, technically, I still haven’t. I will. And on that note. Good morning, John._

John thinks about Sherlock’s tweets from last night as he takes the seventeen stairs slowly, heart thumping, stomach churning. He hears violin music coming from the flat, a slow and plaintive tune that he doesn’t recognize. 

Sherlock stands at the window, his back to the open door, playing. As John enters the flat, he stops and turns to look at him. He looks paler than usual and haggard, with dark circles under his eyes. “Where’s Rosie?” he asks. 

“Downstairs with Mrs. Hudson,” John replies. “Did you sleep at all last night?” 

There’s a pause, then Sherlock shakes his head. “And you?”

“Not really.” 

They look at each other, the silence stretching out between them, as taut as one of the strings on Sherlock’s violin.

“I told you I loved you a month ago,” John says, trying – and failing – to keep the hurt out of his voice. 

Another pause. Sherlock drops his gaze to the floor. “Didn’t count,” he says, his voice low. “You were drunk. On alcohol and oxytocin.”

“Oxyto-”

“Because we were shagging.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake—” He can’t deny that the sex is good, the best he’s ever had in his life, but nothing, not even intoxication, would make him say something he doesn’t feel. “I guess you deleted the expression ‘in vino veritas’, huh?”

A longer pause. “In my experience,” Sherlock replies, still looking at the floor, “you can’t rely on what people say when they’re under the influence.” 

His throat tightens. Thinking about Sherlock using makes his stomach churn and his head ache, but he can’t let himself get sidetracked. His resolve is already wavering, given that both of them have had little sleep. What he wants, more than anything, is to go to Sherlock, hold him, tell him that he loves him too, that everything is going to be okay. But he knows that if they don’t address this now they never will, and it’ll be a cancer in their lives that will grow and grow until it tears them apart. 

It very nearly has already. 

He takes a deep breath. “We need to talk. But first, I’m going to make some tea.” He goes into the kitchen and flips the kettle on, gets mugs out of the cupboard.

Sherlock comes and stands in the doorway, watching him. “You’re still angry with me,” he says. 

“I’m not – well, not as angry as I was yesterday,” he admits, “but we still need to clear the air about some things.” 

Sherlock stands in the doorway a moment longer, then turns and goes back into the sitting room without saying anything. John can hear the sound of the clasps snapping as he puts his violin away in its case. 

John makes tea, then brings the mugs into the sitting room. Sherlock is sitting on the couch, knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around them. John puts his mug on the coffee table, then sits down beside him, holding his own mug in both hands. The heat warms his hands and his insides as well, bolstering him for what he is about to do. 

“I didn’t sleep well for weeks after you jumped,” he says. “Every time I’d close my eyes, I’d see you lying on the pavement. All that blood, your eyes just blank, staring…” His throat closes on the last word and, for a moment, he can’t go on.

Sherlock makes a noise and buries his face in between his knees. 

The memory of that crushing grief feels like a stone in his chest, even now. He takes a sip of tea and clears his throat. “If I did fall asleep, I dreamt about you falling. And when I was awake I couldn’t stop thinking… kept going over it and over it in my head, trying to figure out what I could have said or done differently. If I hadn’t gotten tricked by that phone call. If I’d stayed with you. If the cab had gone faster. If I’d spoken out before everything snowballed, made a post on the blog, worked harder to clear your name.”

“John.” The sound of his name is muffled by Sherlock’s knees. 

“I started to hallucinate you. Especially here,” he says, gesturing around the flat. “I’d be lying in bed and hear you walking in the kitchen. Sometimes I’d hear violin music as I was falling asleep. More times than I can count I’d get this feeling that if I turned around you’d be sitting there, smiling at me, and it would all turn out to have been some bizarre dream and we’d have a good laugh about it.” His left hand starts to tremble and he flexes it a few times, then wraps it tightly around his mug. “It was why I had to leave. I couldn’t take it anymore. But it didn’t help. I started to hear your voice in my head, talking to me.”

“What did I tell you?”

“Not to kill myself, mostly.” 

Sherlock sucks in a breath, his face still hidden in his knees.

He puts his tea on the table. “I’m not trying to hurt you by telling you this, honestly. I just want you to understand what goes through my mind when you hold a gun to your head, loaded or not. Or when you talk about shooting yourself out of boredom.” 

Sherlock doesn’t reply.

“I meant what I said, Sherlock. No joking about death. Ever.” 

There’s a long pause. “I said I was sorry,” Sherlock murmurs, his voice ragged. “I don’t know what else to do. I made a mistake. I wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s the problem,” he says wearily. “You don’t think. Not about me or how your actions affect me.”

No response.

“I mean, I know that it was all a big adventure to you, chasing after Moriarty, playing his game—” 

Sherlock unfolds himself abruptly. His eyes are bright with unshed tears, shivering on his lashes. “He was going to kill you,” he snaps. 

“What?” He looks at Sherlock, confused.

“Moriarty. On the roof. He told me he’d hired gunmen. One for you, one for Mrs. Hudson, one for Lestrade. If I didn’t jump, they’d kill the three of you.” 

“And you believed him?”

“Given that I’d seen two people shot because they’d tried to help me,” Sherlock snarls, “yes, I did.”

John blows out a long breath, scrubs his hand through his hair. He’d nearly forgotten about the assassins Moriarty had had staking them out. “And you couldn’t deduce how to get him to call them off?”

“Of course I could, given enough time. Which was why Moriarty killed himself.”

“What?” Sherlock had told him Moriarty was dead, but he’d never known how. 

“Put the barrel of a gun in his mouth and shot the back of his head off.”

“Right in front of you?” His heart clenches in horror. 

Sherlock nods. 

“Jesus, Sherlock,” he breathes, trying to wrap his mind around this new information. 

Like a shot, Sherlock is off the couch and pacing around the sitting room. “I… I panicked. He’d said the gunman was in place, that he would shoot you if he didn’t see me jump. I knew I couldn’t figure out where he was in time – too many possibilities, too much data, and no way to narrow it down. So it came down to a choice: which way to lose you?

“Lose me?”

“If I didn’t jump, the gunman would shoot you and you’d be dead. I’d made a contingency plan, but it did involve faking my death. I didn’t intend for you to be present, hence the call about Mrs. Hudson, but the conversation with Moriarty took longer than I’d expected and you came back before I was ready.”

He raises his hand. “Wait, just… just a minute – the call about Mrs. Hudson came from you?”

“Well, not me, obviously, since you were talking to me in the lab when you got it. One of my homeless network, who was willing to play paramedic.”

“To get me out of the way?”

“No!” Sherlock snaps. “Have you not been listening to a word I’ve said? To save you from having to watch me jump, which I knew would be traumatic, even if I eventually proved it was fake.”

“You thought…” He feels his face flush. He gets to his feet, fists clenching and unclenching. “I still would have been upset, Sherlock, even if I didn’t see it.” 

Sherlock makes an exasperated sound and rubs his hands through his hair as he paces around the sitting room in a tight circle. “I _know_. My initial plan was to approach you a day or two later, let you know I was still alive, and enlist your help in taking Moriarty’s network down. But the gunman negated all that. I couldn’t risk him having any inkling that I was still alive, as he would if you were doing anything other than grieving, or your life would be in danger again.”

John takes a deep breath. “Hang on. Are you saying… you mean you didn’t fake your death to make it easier for you to catch Moriarty?”

Sherlock snorts. “Hardly. If anything, it made it more difficult. I was forced to depend on Mycroft for almost everything. Money, transport, ID, lodging, guns… it was a nightmare.”

“So you did it… to save my life?”

“Of course.” Sherlock stops and frowns at him slightly, the look he always gives John when he’s a few steps behind. 

“Sherlock….” he breathes, “I…I didn’t… I didn’t realize….” His head is spinning. He’d always assumed that the fall had been about defeating Moriarty.

“But I knew that you wouldn’t forgive me for deceiving you,” Sherlock goes on, continuing to pace around the room. “So – either I lost you to a bullet, or I lost you to what you would inevitably perceive as a betrayal of our friendship. The latter was preferable, obviously, as it would mean you were still alive.”

John’s knees wobble, and he sits down heavily on the couch, rubs his hand over his head. 

Sherlock slows until he is standing in front of the window, staring down at the street, arms folded across his chest. “That was when I knew I was in love with you,” he says quietly. “When I realized that your well-being was essential to mine.” 

His throat is so tight he can barely get the words out, but he does, he forces himself to speak, because this is important. “You… you felt that way the whole time you were gone?”

There’s a pause, and then Sherlock speaks, still looking out the window. His voice is barely audible. “The worst part was at the cemetery. I watched you stand at my grave and beg me to come back, and I wanted to reach out to you, say something to ease your grief, but I couldn’t. It hurt more than anything I’d ever felt before, more than anything I’d ever imagined could.”

It’s hard for him to remember that day, remember his grief, but realizing what Sherlock had been going through makes his heart ache. “You said you’d heard me.”

Sherlock nods. “I thought about contacting you every day. I nearly did more times than I can count. But….” he pauses, then takes a deep breath. “…to be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d survive.”

He feels a chill run down his spine. He remembers the first night they had sex, seeing the scars on Sherlock’s back, the shock and anger he’d felt. The thought that he’d been part of the reason they were there makes him feel ill. “Why… why didn’t you tell me any of this when you came back?”

“I intended to. I was going to surprise you, then confess everything, including how I felt. I had even convinced myself it was all going to work out fine.” He exhales and turns to look at John. A rueful smile curves one corner of his mouth, but his eyes are full of sorrow. “I might have overestimated things a bit.”

John snorts. “A bit, yeah.”

Sherlock looks away, his smile fading. “In any event… Mary was there, and it quickly became clear that you had got on with your life and didn’t feel the same way.”

“I… I didn’t know how I felt,” he replies. He rubs his hands over his knees, the denim rough on his palms. “I was lost without you, floundering, and she… she was a life preserver. I was still adrift, but at least I wasn’t drowning.”

“Then I’m grateful to her,” Sherlock says quietly.

John feels something twist in his belly, dark and sharp like a knife. He doesn’t want Sherlock to be grateful to her, not after she shot him, not after he nearly died because of her, not once but twice, and not after—

But they can’t talk about that yet. It’s a night for healing old wounds, and that one is too fresh. 

“You were being so helpful, with the wedding and all,” he says. “I thought… I thought I must have imagined it, any feelings you had for me.”

“I didn’t want you to know.” 

He swallows, but it feels like glass in his throat. “Except I did.”

Sherlock turns to look at him, his brows drawn together in a sharp frown.

“At my… at the wedding. When you deduced that Mary was pregnant… I saw. Something. In your eyes. Like….” He swallows again. “Like your last hope had died.” 

There’s a sound – John can’t tell if it’s a sigh or a sob – and Sherlock turns away to look out the window again. “I had thought nothing would ever hurt as badly as watching you at my grave,” he said. “I was wrong. Standing beside you while you pledged your life and your love to another, that… that was worse.”

“And yet you encouraged me to reconcile with her,” John says. He realizes his voice is shaking. “Why?”

“You know why,” Sherlock replies, low and intense. He turns back, looks through the open door of the flat with a raised eyebrow. 

John exhales heavily and rubs the back of his neck. He does know. His daughter, Rosamund Mary Watson, currently being cooed to downstairs by their landlady. 

Another long pause. “And I just wanted you to be happy,” Sherlock says, quietly, “even if you couldn’t forgive me for everything I’d done.

He surges to his feet again, the tension in his hands and shoulders begging release. “But I did – I do – forgive you.” 

Sherlock turns to look at him, and the sadness on his face knocks the breath from John’s lungs. “Then why do you keep throwing it in my face?”

John feels his cheeks burn as he remembers the day Sherlock crashed his therapy appointment—

_…when have I ever been a malingerer?_

_You pretended to be dead for two years!_

His stomach plummets and he rubs his left hand over his right. There are times he can still feel the abrasions on his knuckles, feel them ache and throb, like a phantom limb. Feel that rage sweeping over him, pulling him under, drowning him.

And just last night—

_You can leave me if you want, just don’t leave fully_

_I’ll be back tomorrow. At least it’s not taking me two years._

He rubs his hands over his face. So many missteps, so many things unsaid or poorly said, so many moments squandered. It weighs on him like a shroud sometimes. 

And yet… he raises his head and looks around the flat. His beloved, scruffy 221B Baker Street, cluttered and comfortable, the first place that had felt like home after Afghanistan. The only place that had ever felt like home, if he was being honest with himself. 

In spite of everything that had happened, all the mistakes they’d made, they were here, he and Sherlock. The two of them, back where they belonged. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

He sucks in a breath and goes over to Sherlock, wraps his arms around his waist and rests his forehead against the back of Sherlock’s neck. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I promise.” 

Sherlock turns and doesn’t so much return John’s embrace as he folds himself around John, burying his face against his neck. John can feel him trembling. He cups one hand around Sherlock’s neck, rubs the other gently up and down his back. 

“I never get your limits, John,” Sherlock says, voice thick, breath warm and damp against John’s skin.

He sighs and closes his eyes, taking in the familiar scents of Sherlock’s shampoo, his bow resin, their laundry soap. His chest still aches, but it feels cleaner somehow, like a wound that’s been drained. Healing instead of festering. 

“It doesn’t seem that I have any when it comes to you,” he replies, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. 

They stay like that for a long moment. Then Sherlock lifts his head, takes John’s face between his hands, and kisses him. 

A tingling warmth pools in his belly and then slowly spreads into his limbs like honey. Sherlock’s mouth on his is gentle, seeking rather than demanding. John slides one hand up into the curls at the nape of Sherlock’s neck, clenches his other hand in the lapel of Sherlock’s dressing gown, then tugs him closer. He teases his tongue lightly across Sherlock’s lips and smiles to himself when they part to allow him in.

After a few moments, Sherlock pulls away, resting his forehead on John’s, his breath short. His eyes are open; slightly crossed to keep John in focus. “You wanted me to say it to your face. I love you,” he says.

John feels like his heart might burst, it’s so full. “I love you, too,” he says, “you enormous git.”

Sherlock’s smile is one of his real ones, reaching all the way to his eyes. “I thought I was a cock.”

“Utter, _utter_ cock.”

Sherlock slides his hands down to grip John’s arse, pull him close. 

“Oh.” John smiles even as his throat goes dry and his breath catches in his throat. “That’s what you meant.”

***

John lies on their bed, enjoying the cool spring breeze that wafts through the open windows. It’s raining, of course, because it’s London in March, and he can hear the occasional hiss of tyres on wet pavement over the gentle rhythmic plink of the falling drops. The afternoon light slanting in through the curtains is a soft and silvery grey, thanks to the cloud cover. 

His body is pleasantly tired, muscles heavy and loose, but surprisingly his mind isn’t. So he listens to the rain and combs his fingers idly through Sherlock’s hair and enjoys the weight of him sprawled across his chest, fast asleep. 

He can’t remember a time when he felt this uncomplicatedly happy. Certainly not when he was growing up. And in medical school, and his military training, as stimulating as it was, there was always the tension of being evaluated. There were moments like this in Afghanistan, times when he’d managed to save someone’s life, but they were fleeting among the many times he’d lost that battle and the general strain of life in the midst of war. 

Probably the time that comes closest is the day he met Sherlock, but even that memory is tinged more with the adrenaline rush of novelty and adventure than the quiet and simple joy he feels in this moment. 

So he gives up trying to categorize it, and just lets himself enjoy it, the feeling that, finally, everything in his world is exactly who and where it needs to be. 

Sherlock inhales and shifts, stretching lazily. Smiling, John tugs lightly at his hair, and Sherlock makes a rumbling sound that reminds John of a big cat purring. He turns his head so John can see his face, his eyes mere slits. 

“Hi, gorgeous,” John says softly. 

Sherlock blinks at John a few times. “That was horrible,” he mutters.

“Excuse me?”

Sherlock pushes himself up, bracing himself on his hands, and leans forward to capture John’s mouth in a languid kiss. “Not this,” he says. “Fighting with you.”

John ignores this, because Sherlock’s velvet baritone is doing things to him, lower down, and he’d rather concentrate on that lush, wicked mouth. 

But Sherlock isn’t put off quite so easily, and after a few moments he pulls his head back. “I’m serious. Promise me we’ll never do that again.”

He can’t help it, the statement – coming from Sherlock, of all people – surprises a deep belly laugh out of him. Sherlock looks hurt, and John reaches up, strokes the backs of his fingers lightly across his cheek in apology. “Sorry, love, I doubt that’s in the cards.”

“Why not?” 

“Because you’re a stroppy drama queen and I’ve got a temper,” he replies. 

Now Sherlock just looks affronted. He opens his mouth to reply but John slides his hand around to the back of his neck and tugs his head down for another kiss. When he feels Sherlock’s body relax he manages, with a little luck and a little leverage, to flip them over so that Sherlock is on his back, stretched out underneath him. 

He’s beautiful like this, John thinks, all long pale limbs, cool and smooth in the dim light. His dark curls are spread out around his head like a corona. “But it’ll be okay,” he tells Sherlock. “We’re a mess, but we’re always better together than apart.” 

Sherlock smiles. In the gloaming, his eyes are the color of starlight and just as bright. “The two of us against the rest of the world,” he says.

“Always,” John replies, and bends to kiss him.


End file.
